


Becoming

by BurningTea



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Episode 20 was a fever dream, Expat wanted soft intimacy, Gen, I give her pie and pancakes, M/M, None of that last episode happened., Post-Episode: s15e19 Inherit the Earth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-21
Updated: 2020-11-21
Packaged: 2021-03-10 08:00:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27649913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BurningTea/pseuds/BurningTea
Summary: A few years after they gain their free will, the boys meet up in a diner.
Relationships: Castiel & Sam Winchester, Castiel/Dean Winchester, Sam Winchester & Dean Winchester, team free will - Relationship
Comments: 9
Kudos: 102





	Becoming

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ExpatGirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ExpatGirl/gifts).



> Happy birthday, beloved Expat! I hope this is someway to what you wanted.

The diner is warm, the windows fogged, and Castiel sees only shapes outside. An impulse strikes him, and he leans towards the glass, sets his pointer finger against it, and drags it along. The skin doesn’t stick but it feels almost as though it does, and he thinks of the way humans slough parts of themselves, all the time, everywhere. It’s something they don’t have to think about, this leaving of pieces. His vessel will be leaving small parts of itself on the cleared glass. 

He draws a shape. 

‘Can I take your order, honey?’

It’s the same waitress as the last time they were here, a woman with moss coloured eyes and hair that curls around the nape of her neck. The last time, she was tense and unhappy, concerned for a child who needed an operation. She’s much more relaxed today. 

‘Yes,’ he says, and doesn’t ask how the child is doing, because this waitress has no idea Castiel visited their home, that he looked at the model tractors and the picture books about birds, that he looked at the hole in the boy’s heart and healed it. He can do that now. Again. It’s something he chose to keep. ‘Coffee. Black.’

He gives the rest of the order without having to stop and think. 

Once she’s left the table, he goes back to the window, adds another line to his shape. He hears the door rattle, hears boots meet the floor, and lets his gaze linger on the image he’s created. This is something he isn’t yet used to.

‘Hey, Cas.’

Dean’s voice is warm. Fond. When Castiel turns to face him, Dean’s smile, his eyes, are full of the same warmth. His cheeks are flushed, his hair is windswept, and the collar of his jacket is turned up. 

‘You walked here,’ Castiel says, even as he slides over to give Dean more space on the bench seat. 

‘Yeah. Felt like some air, you know? And it could be the last clear day we get for a while.’

The cushion dips and shifts as Dean settles. His thigh ends up pressed against Castiel’s though there’s more than enough space. A choice. 

‘Hey,’ Dean says, knocking his shoulder into Castiel’s, ‘you know what today is, right?’

Of course, he knows. Still, he chooses to stare silently at Dean and wait to be told. The widening grin alone is worth it. 

‘It’s the End Times,’ Dean announces, glee in each word. 

The face he pulls may not be a choice. Some things are more difficult than others to consciously decide. But the joy in such a simple thing, in knowing he’s saying something cheesy and leaning into it, is a choice. It’s one of the things Dean has decided to keep and Castiel loves it. 

He loves Dean, but that isn’t the subject at hand. 

‘It is,’ he agrees. ‘I already ordered.’

Five times over the last month, they have done this at a different diner. Each time, Dean has announced it as the End Times. One day, perhaps it really will be, but that doesn’t matter. This, today, is not really an end. It’s another shedding, another choice. It’s a continuation of a more important choice, made as the dust settled and they looked at each other and knew everyone was different, that now there was no script but the one they wrote for themselves. 

Dean drops his voice to something conspiratorial, glancing around the diner as though he really thinks the truck driver at the counter may be spying on them, or the young father at another booth may have plans to harm them. The glint in his eye tells a different story and there is none of that tension in his shoulders, around his mouth, that would mean he really felt hunted. 

Being hunted was an easy thing to shed. Believing they are not being hunted is less so, but they are working on it. It’s getting easier. 

‘You know, Cas, seeing as Sam’s not here yet, it’s our chance to skip his choice.’

‘Sam will be here soon,’ Castiel says, as he does every time Dean tries this. ‘He was held up at daycare.’ He pauses and fixes Dean with a look. Some of the things he’s chosen to keep are not Dean’s favourite, but this one is too useful to shed, and not every choice has to be decided by committee. ‘We will try Sam’s choice.’

Dean rolls his eyes, but the way he spreads his arms along the back of the seat, one settling just behind Castiel’s shoulders, is proof he doesn’t mind. 

Sam arrives just as their order does, greeting them both with a sunny smile and thanking the waitress as he removes his scarf. It’s a new colour, but still in the part of the spectrum he’s taken to recently, autumnal and comforting. 

‘Hey, Sammy,’ Dean says, ‘you know what day it is?’

‘Thursday,’ Sam replies, his lips twitching. 

‘Today is important, Sam,’ Castiel finds himself saying, because this, too, is something he’s trying out, this teasing between family and friends. He isn’t very good at it, but he made Claire laugh the last time he saw her, and that’s more than enough incentive to keep going. ‘You should treat it with the respect it deserves.’

‘Uh-huh.’ He gets a raised eyebrow and one of the plates pushed towards him. Some kind of sandwich, cheese melting out around the sides. ‘Then in the interests of being respectful, I think the oldest should go first.’

It doesn’t take long to eat the food, even with the time taken to split each dish three ways, and soon they sit around empty plates with a decision to make. 

‘Okay, so,’ Dean starts, ‘can’t say I’m sold on the salad. Hey, don’t you pull that face at me, Sam. I liked that one with the little red bits in, didn’t I?’

‘Pomegranate seeds,’ Sam tells him. 

He has to know Dean is well aware of what they are, but this pretence of theirs that Dean is not as intelligent and well-informed as he is still lingers. Castiel hopes they choose to let it go eventually, but there’s no need to push them. It takes years for every bit of a person’s body to fall away and regrow, and it doesn’t, can’t, happen all at once. Speaking as one of the few beings ever to experience a complete and sudden destruction of the body and an equally quick renewal, Castiel is sure the slow way is better. 

‘Yeah,’ Dean says, jabbing the fork he still holds in his brother’s direction. ‘Those. I’m keeping those little jewel things in salad. But whatever this gunk on today’s salad is meant to be, that can go.’

Sam defends the dressing, insisting Eileen loves it and arguing it tastes a lot better than half of what Dean eats. 

Castiel lets it wash over him. There is still a lot to examine and decide upon, still many things to settle within and between themselves, but this new ritual they have, of working through every item on a menu to test what they really, truly think of them, this is worthwhile even if it ends up changing nothing about what any of them eat. 

Later, he will order another slice of the blueberry pie, he thinks, and take it to the tree Jack likes best in the little woodland in the Netherlands that’s become one of their favourite meeting spots. Jack rarely sets foot on Earth, partly by choice and partly by necessity, but Castiel doesn’t believe it will do any good for Jack to lose his connection to the world. And the blueberry pie is the best thing on this entire menu. He wants to share it with his son. 

‘Cas agrees with me, don’t you, Cas?’ Dean asks, pulling him back to the conversation. 

Castiel tilts his head and waits for further information. He finds himself agreeing with Dean more often than not, but the freedom to disagree has been hard won, and it’s good to practice that, too. 

‘Eileen loves it when Uncle Dean visits, right?’ Dean says. 

‘I never said she didn’t,’ Sam protests. ‘I said the kids get riled up when you fling them around the room before bed.’

Over these last few years, since…well, since everything, Castiel has watched the brothers struggle with the fact they are no longer fighting for their right to choose. It’s frightening, he knows. 

He watches them now, renewed, free, having chosen to keep so much of who they were, and knows that Dean will ride with Sam back to the ranch he shares with Eileen. He knows that Dean will call him at some point tomorrow and ask Castiel to come pick him up. He knows that Dean will greet him with a new list of places to try, and if, at this point, it’s more an excuse to spend time together, just the three of them, nobody will point it out. 

He knows that it won’t be long until Dean is ready to face the words Castiel gave him before his last death. Castiel has been ready for this conversation for a long time, but he can wait until Dean is, too. They’ve touched on it, a time or several, and the scraps of sentences have already shown the shape of what will come. 

When he is ready, Dean will let Castiel know, and they will be able to choose each other in the full and free knowledge that it is their choice. 

The air is sharp with cold when they finally leave the diner, and they don’t linger over their goodbyes. Before taking flight to the Netherlands, Castiel takes one more look at the shape he drew in the window’s fog. A symbol so rare not even every angel has known it, but one that he has hope they will learn, with Jack at the helm. It means change. 

‘See you tomorrow, Cas,’ Dean calls out, waving as he opens the door to Sam’s car. ‘Bring me some of them pancakes they make over there! And tell Jack he better drop by soon.’

And then the Winchesters are in a car that isn’t the Impala, which sits on the driveway of Dean’s house almost an hour’s walk away, and they’re driving away off to see Eileen and the kids and the place Sam is putting down roots. 

Castiel smiles and decides he will bring back enough of every kind of pancake he can find for them all to try. The next generation of Winchesters will grow up knowing they get to decide for themselves.


End file.
